It must be said: I love video games! I don’t get the chance to play them that often, but I love them to the point that I have entered the video games localisation industry.

Something that has always disappointed me, though, is female characters in games. The year is 2010, and we are yet to see more than a few females who are good at what they do, look as if they are actually capable of doing the tasks set out for them and for crying out loud, are dressed appropriately!

Compare this:

To this:

And tell me you don’t see a discrepancy in the characters’ portrayal.

This doesn’t count:

If you are a male gamer, you were probably gay for him, as it were.

Yes, I am aware that many male characters are designed to a masculine ideal as well. My problem is that the overwhelming majority of female characters are designed to be young, sexually attractive, and mis-proportioned, or otherwise wearing clothing unsuitable for their chosen occupation. At least with male characters you get a bit more variety in your stereotypes: the old sage, the wimpy kid with glasses and acne, the emo, the ponce… I could go on.

The reason why I’m writing about this is because of an article I read in gamesradar.com recently, listing “The Top 7 Tasteful Game Heroines“. I went there with an open mind, although to be honest my hopes weren’t high due to my freakishly high standards. I was pleasantly surprised. The problem was, however, that it was painfully obvious how much the editor had to stretch their own initial criteria in order to meet their standard list of 7.

The list reiterated my belief that game company Valve is in the forefront when it comes to creating believable women in games, designed with dignity. Almost all of the characters they mentioned which really fit their criteria were Valve creations like Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2, Zoey from Left 4 Dead and Chell from Portal (though she didn’t quite make the list for some reason; probably because otherwise it may as well have been an article about Valve’s tasteful women). The only other character on the list that I really bought was Faith from Mirror’s Edge.

Okay, so 3 out of 7 characters on the list were fine. This was a lot more than I was expecting. But somewhere along the line it became apparent that ‘sex appeal’ was to be included as a legitimate substitute for ‘believability’ and ‘suitable clothing’. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but to my understanding the idea was to go against femme fatalesque stereotypes like Lara Croft?

One of the characters mentioned in the article (and indeed in many sources attempting to prove that women in games are no different from men) was Samus Aran from Metroid, a lead lady in the days of gaming when the best role models for women in games were Mrs. Pacman and Princess Toadstool. One thing that Games Radar dismisses as a minor point which I find extremely problematic is that from the very first game, you are rewarded for doing well in the game by being allowed to see Samus in less and less clothing.

That’s like saying to someone: “Good job, soldier. You just saved the world, nay, the universe! Now strip so we can marvel at your mostly naked body.”

I don’t know about you, but to me that’s hardly a reason for the women’s movement to celebrate. Not only that, but as the game series has gone on, her sexuality seems to have been emphasised more and more in the end-of-game reveals, with her various skintight body suits and her incredibly feminine features.

In principle I don’t object overly to people doing things like this. The problem is when it is all you see, and when people use examples like this as reasons for you to believe that women are treated the same as men in video games. Forgive me, but the routine has grown excrementally stale!

I understand that the kind of women included in the Games Radar article were mainly put in there to meet the list’s quota. All the same, for me it really highlights the continuing plight of women in games to this day. I guess this is more reason for me to aim to enter the video game industry!

Hello there. You may have noticed that I’ve been having a wee bit of difficulty adjusting my current site to display comics in proper webcomic form, or indeed at all.

Well, in an effort to counter this, I have decided to make a comics sub-domain dedicated especially to host my comics such as Emvok and anything else I have made or will make in the future. It’s still under construction at the moment (like the rest of my site!), and Emvok is on the way over, but in the meantime, please enjoy actually being able to view comics!

Just wanted to let you know what’s happening. I’ll let you know once everything’s all fine and dandy!

Also submitted to the Australian Zombie Awareness Association. I’m trying to get back into watercolours; it’s the only non-digital colouring method where I feel like I can fix things even if I mess up!

I drew this sketch at the school where I work one day, and then used it on the Australian Zombie Awareness Association home page. Perhaps it is indicative of the students I sometimes have to work with.

This could be YOU.

Ah yes. Zombie Apocalypse. Nothing like it.

So, many of my close friends are into zombie movies. But we are mere Australians with strict gun laws nation-wide; the majority of established zombie-culling methods are useless to us! Australia is a land ignored by zombie experts. We are isolated all around us by sea with no quick way to flee the country. Should the zombocalypse break out in our Melbourne town today, we would quickly be overwhelmed.

So, we decided to do something about it. From today, we are starting up the Australian Zombie Awareness Association, which will cater to our more vulnerable nation. You too are encouraged to join us as we scrupulously search for evidence of our impending zombie doom.

The web site will contain invaluable information regarding what we Australians must do to prepare ourselves for the inevitable onslaught, as well as a running commentary on our research into the zombie threat, and many useful zombie-related links. It is still under construction (even more so than this web site; why can’t I finish a project before going on to the next one?!) but in the meantime we hope that you can support us on our Facebook page.

I, official record keeper of the Australian Zombie Awareness Association, look forward to seeing you there soon! Until next time… BRAINS.

Hello there! Today I’m going to teach you how I drew a picture entirely digitally three years ago. It’s been a while, and my methods have probably changed, but I’m sure they’re still valid to some degree. Anyway, here goes!

Tools Used:

• Corel Painter (for sketching)
• Adobe Photoshop (for colouring)
• Wacom Mouse Pen (for everything)

Step 1: Sketching the Basic Image

During this stage I use Corel Painter, a marvelous program if you want to simulate real media like pencil, charcoal or watercolours. I’ve still not fully utilised its awesomeness myself, but if I do I’ll be sure to post up a tutorial or two about my adventures.

This is a rough sketch done over two layers. The first layer is the basic cross-haired circle for the head, and the second layer is for the rest of the face. Often I will have an extra layer on top of that just for the hair.

I like sketching with a mouse pen because of the pressure sensitivity, just like the real thing. I have trouble achieving the same effect with Photoshop, but this is probably because my mouse pen is one hundred years old.
Step 2: Cleaning Up the Sketch

Next, I clean up all the loose ends on the sketch. Personally I prefer a sketchy look, and depending on the look you are going for cleaning up may or may not be necessary, but generally speaking if you are going to be colouring your work in sketchy lines can distract from the over-all effect of the piece. You decide!

Step 3: The Flat Colour Stage

Here is where the cross-over between Corel Painter and Photoshop occurs. At the moment I find that Corel Painter is best for natural-looking colour, whereas Photoshop is great for more CG-oriented effects or simulating cel animation. That’s just my opinion though.

I usually put each colour on a separate layer in Photoshop to allow for easy manipulation when it comes to shading, and also so I can afford to be careless with the flat colour, smearing it all over the picture without fear of repercussion. Be liberal with your colour at this stage. Don’t be scared to colour way over the lines. This can always be cleaned up later (as seen above) and the important part is to know what colours you’re actually going to use in the piece.

Kiba is probably alarmed that I am including her in a tutorial even though I don’t draw her anymore.

Step 4: Shading and Finishing Off

Okay, to be fair now, this isn’t actually a finished piece. There is still a lot to be shaded and fixed, but I can’t be bothered finishing it years after its creation!

But! You can see how the shading has begun. There is much use of the dodge and burn tools, as well as the airbrush and a lot of smudging with the smudge tool.

When you begin shading, select the colour that you are going to be editing, eg. the entire orange of the face. Then save the selection (Select > Save Selection) as something you’ll remember, eg. “face_orange”. This way, even after you have shaded everything so that the colour is in a gradient or whatever, you can still be sure that you can easily select the whole section again if you need to (Select > Load Selection > face_orange).

And there you have it. That’s how I roll. Sometimes.

Please keep in mind that this is just a basic tutorial showing which tools I used and when, as well as the stages of the drawing/colouring process. I will probably upload other tutorials at a later time showing more detailed explanations for how each step is accomplished. Write to me if you really want to know something in particular; if there is a lot of interest in learning, then I’ll upload more tutorials, more quickly!

Okay, so it’s been a while since my last post. But it seems like everything is beginning to fall into place.

Please bear with me for a few more months while I upload all of my old content and work on the layout of this site.

In the meantime, I should probably mention how AWESOME Mozilla Thunderbird is for me at the moment. For those who don’t know what Thunderbird is, I guess a brief explanation is due:

In a nutshell, Thunderbird does what Microsoft Outlook does: collect your email and display it in a user interface that some people may find easier to deal with. But Thunderbird is different, because the possibilities for extending it are limited only by your own programming/download ability. There are hundreds of free add-ons available online, much like with Firefox. All of these are designed to tailor to specific needs. And I have very high needs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Gmail and I love the Gmail interface. My main reason for switching over was that I was finding it extremely difficult to separate my three lives (personal, work and creative) email-wise without making three separate email accounts. While this may have worked in itself somewhat, signing in and out of three different accounts every day looked like it was going to be just as effective as doing nothing at all.

Apparently, Thunderbird can retrieve mail from multiple accounts at the same time, and the mail is stored in separate folders. So, if one day I feel like I want to concentrate on work for a while I can ignore the other two accounts and focus on my work account. Even so, I can keep an eye on how many emails the other accounts are getting, which is great for someone paranoid like me.

My other problem was that my work account was previously used both for work and my personal life, so I had two years’ worth of backlogged emails from Facebook, friends and the like in the archives. In order to completely separate my three lives, I wanted to put all of the old emails that were unrelated to work into my new personal account, but I didn’t want to have to forward each email individually.

So, what could I do? Apparently it’s as simple as dragging the emails from one account into the other. I’ve double-checked with the actual Gmail interface, and it’s true: the email looks as though it may as well have been sent straight to my personal account in the first place. I have no idea how this is achieved, but it’s pretty awesome, whatever happens.

The switch from Gmail was so easy, as well. The latest version of Thunderbird practically favours Gmail for integration of email accounts, and this add-on makes it easy to sync your Google calendar with that of Thunderbird.

I’ve been shouting the utter convenience of Thunderbird to the rafters these past few days and I thought it should culminate in a post here, in case anyone else is in the same predicament I was in. Most of my tech-savvy friends are laughing at me right now (the simple matter of Gmail’s infinite superiority in every way) but I guess I’ll see how this little adventure goes!

Poppyseed (aka Emo Bob) was incredibly emo when we adopted him from Keysborough Animal Shelter. He shut himself off from us, and if we offered him food he would take it and throw it away, as if to say “I hate you AND your charity!” On his first day with us, he occupied himself with tearing to shreds the newspaper in his new hutch.

While he has settled down from that time somewhat and is quite a friendly and sociable bunny now, he still occasionally displays his old tendencies. In this video, he contemplates why life is so sour, while eating a lemon.

Well, the bunnies went exploring today and I found out just how flexible 7-month old Paprika was.

Bad things happen to me when I film. I’ve started making a compilation of all these things, starting from the first three to happen this year. I suppose they might be good for other people’s amusement, if anything…